Propelled by an electrical current and traveling at speeds up to Mach 7.5, the US Navy's Hyper Velocity Projectile can shoot out of a rail gun to destroy enemy ships, vehicles
This gun could bring increased range and lethality while reducing cost.

Phillip Devoe:
...
It is true that Barack Obama left behind a significant missile-defense legacy: By cutting programs before they were complete, slashing defense funding, and embracing a risky and unproven strategy, he left the United States vulnerable to ICBM attacks from hostile nations such as North Korea and Iran.

The story begins with President Bill Clinton, who in 1993 cancelled the Ground-Based Interceptors (GBI) program — a component of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which can protect against ICBMs and is located at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. By 2008, President George W. Bush had asked for 44 GBIs, but Obama cut the program back to 30 within weeks of his inauguration. Ten of these GBIs were slated to be based in Poland, but they were cut along with a Ground-Based Radar in the Czech Republic, which not only made the U.S. more vulnerable to threats from Iran, but appeased Russia. Moscow celebrated the European GBI cancell…

A van hit pedestrians in the center of the Spanish city in what the police called a terrorist attack. Two men were in custody.

Witnesses said the driver weaved back and forth, apparently trying to hit as many people as he could.
This fits the ISIS MO by using a large rental van for the mass murder attack. It is similar to other recent attacks in Europe and the UK. Trump has condemned the attacks and so far the media has not questioned his sincerity.

NY Times:Bannon Mocks Colleagues and ‘Alt-Right’ in Interview In an interview he said he believed was private, Stephen K. Bannon described the alt-right as a “collection of clowns” and lashed out at rivals in the Trump administration.
I have never met anyone that I knew to be in the alt-right and I have been an active conservative blogger since at least 9-11. I had never even heard of these people before they were used as a reason to oppose Trump and Bannon. They appear to be the useful idiots of the leftist attack machine.

NY Times:Trump Opens Breach With Party, Military and Industry In the wake of his defense of white supremacists, President Trump was abandoned by executives, contradicted by military leaders and shunned by Republicans.According to close aides, the president said he felt liberated by his news conference and viewed it as his latest retort to a political establishment trying to tame his impulses.
People have been reacting to the false narrative pushed by the NY Times and Washington Post that Trump was defending the very people he called bad. This is a grossly misleading characterization of what he said and they should retract it. This distortion is the reason for all the criticism. The media needs to look at its on visceral hatred that is demonstrated in stories like this.

Reuters:
Major oil producers pushed up high bids at a Gulf of Mexico offshore auction to $121 million on Wednesday, a nearly seven-fold increase from a year ago, as their return to deep water exploration gained momentum.

This compared with $18 million in high bids at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's (BOEM) Outer Continental Shelf auction last summer.

Winners will be announced after a 90-day review.

Some producers have signaled that they expect Gulf of Mexico projects to become more profitable now that they have trimmed operations to adapt to low oil prices. Offshore drilling typically requires higher prices for producers to break even.

Royal Dutch Shell claimed the largest number of blocks, with 19 high bids valued at a combined $25.1 million. Chevron Corp followed with 15 high bids totaling $27.9 million. Anadarko Petroleum Corp won 10 blocks for $10.6 million. Exxon Mobil Corp took seven blocks of land for $20.4 million.
...
The oil recovery continues to expand and is no …

Conservative Review:
Wondering why so much of the Left in America continues to be silent — if not rationalizing — in the face of extremist left-wing groups like “Antifa”?

It might be because much of the mainstream Left has chosen to link up with radical, fringe organizations that agree with much of Antifa’s communist/socialist/anarchist ideology.

In a blog post this week, the Indivisible guide — a leftist organization that forms coalitions of groups to advocate for leftist causes — has detailed how in the wake of the Charlottesville mayhem this past weekend, traditional left-of-center groups have thrown their weight behind the revolutionary Left.

Indivisible revealed that a conglomerate has formed to “stand in solidarity with Charlottesville.”

While the coalition involves recognizable groups like the Obama-founded Organizing for Action (OFA), the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, the National Education Association (NEA), and other standard actors, it also includes openly extremist…

John Lott:
Has the media ever so deliberately and consistently misinterpreted what a president said?

It certainly seems as if the media finally found its proof that President Trump is a racist. ABC News’ coverage was all too typical:

Trump quickly blamed both sides for the conflict, adding that there were "very fine people" among both the protesters — which included white supremacists and white nationalists — and the counterprotesters.

"I think there is blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there is blame on both sides," Trump said today. "You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides," he added.
With wall-to-wall news coverage repeating this misreading of Trump’s statement, it’s not too surprising that politicians from both parties quickly condemned the “very fine people” comment. NBC’s headline read: “Democratic, Republican Lawmakers Decry Trump’s Latest Charlottesville Remarks.” Ohio Gov. Jo…

The next certification to Congress is due in mid-October and the odds of it surviving seem slight. Not only is Trump pre-disposed to pulling out of the deal, Iran is making it very easy for him to do so.

According to the text of the agreement passed by Congress, the key benchmark for evaluating the deal is Iranian compliance with UNSCR 2231. If that is the standard, Iran is out of compliance in a way that cannot be cured.

The German daily Welt revealed Iran is separately violating UNSCR 2231 by transferring weapons to Russia for maintenance via Syria. The article is in German but Google Translate is good enough to get what’s going on – the transfers are happening and they’re a violation of the resolution – plus Welt published a …

Fuel Fix:Manufacturers urge Perry to slow LNG exports
A lobbying group representing U.S. manufacturers says the Department of Energy's continued approval of new LNG export terminals could significantly deplete American natural gas supplies within a little more than three decades.

In a letter to Energy Secretary Rick Perry Wednesday, the Industrial Energy Consumers Alliance asked he stop approving new LNG export terminals that will send American natural gas to countries without which the United States has a free trade agreement - as it does with Mexico and Canada.
...
The group also opposed the initial LNG facilities used to cool the gas for export. These exports have had little effect on the price of natural gas, and if anything has increased the supply. They appear to be relying on old data which significantly understated the existing supply of natural gas.

...

But estimates on domestic reserves are notoriously conservative, and executives in the natural gas industry believe that…

Fuel Fix:
One of the U.S. oil industry's biggest bottlenecks in West Texas will soon clear up dramatically as new sand mines open in the oil-rich Permian Basin.

Sand suppliers like U.S. Silica and Fairmount Santrol plan to build several local mines in the region over the next 18 months, with a combined annual output of roughly 55 million tons of sand, which is a critical ingredient in the slurry that frackers fire underground to snap dense oil-bearing rock formations.

For many U.S. drillers, the construction of these West Texas sand mines would eliminate the need for expensive rail transportation from white sand mines in Wisconsin, shedding up to 40 percent of the cost of getting sand to fracking sites scattered across the Permian, according to oil field service company Halliburton and consultancy IHS Markit....
This is yet another way that shale producers are becoming more efficient and more competitive with OPEC. It will also make the Permian wells more competitive with other sh…

Eddie Scarry reports on media reaction to Trump's use of the term as if they have never heard it before, but some have actually written about it.

Others are finally starting to notice that Antifa is a violent group that is a danger to this country. Here is an excerpt of a report by an AP writer published in the Daily Caller.
In the days since violent clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville culminated in a neo-Nazi sympathizer driving his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, journalists have mainstreamed the self-described “anti-fascists” (or “antifa”) at the rally — largely ignoring their involvement in the escalating political violence in this country.

Fox News:
Amid the stunning revelations of advancements in North Korea's nuclear missile program, experts say there's another weapon in Pyongyang’s arsenal the world should keep a close eye on.

Kim Jong Un’s military has been collecting large stockpiles of nerve agents, such as sarin and VX, that could target U.S. military bases in the region and large cities like Seoul and Tokyo, according to a new report.

“Nuclear weapons are not the only threat,” Kelsey Davenport, director of non-proliferation policy for the Arms Control Association told the McClatchy Washington Bureau. “North Korea could respond to a U.S. attack using chemical weapons. That would be devastating.”

While Pyongyang officials deny the rogue regime possesses chemical weapons, the country began developing chemical weapons in 1961 amid rising tensions at that time.

The Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology reports the country has four military bases equipped with chemical weapons and at least 11 facilities …

I have been a conservative blogger since shortly after 9-11. I have attended several conservative gatherings and had never even heard of the "alt-right" before last year's election and have still never met anyone associated with it. The groups that gathered in Virginia was still tiny compared to the liberal fascists who have engaged in mayhem and violence this year at several locations including Trump's inaugurations.

They have become the black dressed and masked KKK of the Democrat party attacking conservatives gatherings and destroying property. You can find pictures of them swinging clubs at the Virginia event. They are at war with the 1st amendment a…

NY Times:Trump Gives White Supremacists an Unequivocal Boost
When Mr. Trump equated anti-racism protesters with neo-Nazis, he legitimized white supremacists like no modern president.
Trump was unequivocal in his in his condemnation of the neo-Nazis and white supremacists. What he condemned about the liberal fascists was their violence which has been on display across the country ever since his inauguration.

There have been many more violent riots by the fraudulently named Antifa than there have been by anyone else. The media seeks to ignore their culpability in instigating violence apparently because they are attacking conservatives as well as the demonstrators in Virginia.

Antifa has become an anti free speech movement and it looks like the Times writers think they will be last to be attacked by this mob violence by leftists.

UPI:
Accounting for about half of all the active rigs in the United States, the energy regulator in Texas said total drilling permits nearly doubled from last year.

The Railroad Commission of Texas, the state energy regulator, said it issued 1,011 original drilling permits last month, compared with the 631 issued in July 2016. Of those, 893 were for drilling new oil or natural gas wells.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Texas shale is the most productive in the nation. Based on its latest drilling productivity report, the EIA expects production from the Permian shale basin to increase 2.5 percent from July for about 2.5 million barrels per day. Eagle Ford production would increase 2 percent to 1.38 million barrels per day if EIA forecasting is accurate.

A report from global consulting firm McKinsey & Co. found that, under a scenario where crude oil prices move above $60 from 2019, output from the Permian shale basin in Texas, one of the more lucrative reser…

Fuel Fix:
West Texas drillers again left scores of untapped wells in their wake last month as they drilled and pumped even more oil into the oversupplied market.

Last month, oil companies left 135 more wells dormant in the Permian Basin, bringing the inventory of so-called drilled but uncompleted wells to 2,330, up 73 percent compared to last July, according to the Energy Department.

Once those wells are brought into production, they could add hundreds of thousands of oil barrels to the nation's surging output each day – even as OPEC tries to cut global supplies to support crude prices, which have stalled under $50 a barrel. In the Permian Basin, the average well comes online producing 400 barrels of oil a day, according to the consultancy Drillinginfo in Austin.

The U.S. oil industry's large buildup in untapped wells isn't really intentional. During the two-year energy bust, several big producers said they'd still drill some wells but they wouldn't frack them, keepin…

...
Barack Obama, our first black president, won well over 90 percent of the black vote, yet from an economic perspective he delivered poor results. Black incomes from 2009 to 2014 fell more for blacks than any other racial or ethnic group. Just as an example of good intentions run amok: policies like raising the minimum wage increases had a statistically significant negative effect on black teenage labor force participation rates.

I would argue that two factors hold back economic progress for blacks: a lack of jobs in inner cities and poor educational opportunities. On both of these, Trump is delivering positive results. The black unemployment rate has fallen by a full percentage point in the last year, black labor force participation is up, and the number of black Americans with a job has risen by 600,000 from last year. Preliminary data show black wages and incomes up since the election.
...
There is …

Legal Insurrection:
In what could be one of the most serious violations of the Iran Nuclear Deal so far, Russia may be involved in secret weapons deals with Tehran. The allegations were made by the German newspaper Die Welt, citing Western intelligence agencies — often a shorthand for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Die Welt, Germany’s most-read newspaper, published a satellite image showing Iranian military aircraft on the Russian airbase located inside the Syrian territories currently under the control of the Assad Regime. According to the newspaper, intelligence sources have confirmed the existence of a “new smuggling route between Russia and Iran” that runs through Assad-held Syria. On two occasions, Iranian planes delivered military equipment to the Russian airbase that was reportedly shipped to Russia for maintenance purposes.

Under the terms of the Obama-backed Iran Nuclear Deal Framework announced in April 2015, to which Russia is also a sign…

Breitbart:
Chicago police clashed with members of a local Antifa group outside a Cook County courthouse Tuesday evening. Three protesters were detained.

The violent Antifa activists gathered outside the Cook County courthouse at Belmont and Western starting around 2 PM, claiming to protest a hearing of a man they say is a “white supremacist,” DNA Info reported.

Police approached the protesters and asked them to stop blocking the streets and to move their marching to a sidewalk, but as the discussion continued, at least one protester began to scuffle with officers.

In seconds, several protesters jumped in and began a brawl with police....
There are videos of the attacks at the link above. There is something wrong with these people that the mainstream media seems eager to ignore.

Power Line:This afternoon President Trump conducted an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower. Asked about Charlottesville, Trump said there was blame on both sides. The press went ballistic: A combative President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday “there is blame on both sides” for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, appearing to once again equate the actions of white supremacist groups and those protesting them. In the AP’s telling, the antifas were just “protesting” the white supremacists. No mention of fighting, no reference to baseball bats. The president’s comments effectively wiped away the more conventional statement he delivered at the White House one day earlier when he branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as “criminals and thugs.” Why? There is no inconsistency between neo-Nazis being criminals and thugs and antifas sharing the blame for the violence in Charlottesville. They are criminals and thugs, too. …

The move could lead some insurers to withdraw from the program, potentially leaving five percent of Americans living in areas with no insurance options next year, the Congressional Budget Office said.
The courts found that Obama's use of these subsidies without Congressional authorization was illegal. That is why Trump could just cut them off because the law did not provide for them to begin with. It became a hidden and illegal cost perpetrated by Democrats when they came up with their terrible health care law.

This is why this law should be repealed and a new law should replace it that makes more sense.

NY Times:Behind ‘Many Sides’ Remark, a Conservative View of Left ExtremismThe president’s reluctance to single out the far right reflects a widely held conservative belief that the media overlooks left-wing extremism.
The liberal fascists have been responsible for almost all political violence since the inauguration of Trump until they clashed with the neo Nazis and white nationalists in Virginia. These people usually wear masked to hide their identity and dress all in black. They carry clubs and baseball bats for attacking conservatives and Trump supporters and for damaging property.

It should be noted that there was no violence on the first day of the events in Virginia. The violence happened on the second day when the Antifa showed up and attacked people. That the media gave them a pass in the Virginia violence is seen as rank media bias. It is wrong to defend the neo-Nazis and it should be just as wrong to ignore the violence caused by the liberal fascists.

Austin Bay:
The Trump administration’s “pressure strategy” is disrupting the North Korean regime.

In March of this year, the Trump foreign policy team of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, and the Tweeter-in-Chief himself began a coordinated attack on Kim Jong-un’s regime, with the interim goals of disrupting its political and military plans, psychologically rattling its leaders, and exposing the regime’s grave weaknesses. The ultimate goal was to set conditions for achieving the long-range goal: denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

The great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu said that the best strategy is to attack the enemy’s plans. With a soldier-scholar like Jim Mattis in the Trump administration, a stroke or two of Sun Tzu should surprise no one.

As a result, the Trump team is taking diplomatic, economic and military actions—not drawing feckless rhetorical red lines. Its actions are seizing the initiative, limiting the enemy’s options, and exploiting the …

A new batch of communications turned over to congressional committees reveals concerns within the campaign about establishing contacts.
Apparently, a low-level staffer kept suggesting setting up an open meeting with Russian leaders, and he kept being rebuffed by campaign leaders including Manafort. A fairer headline would show that the Trump campaign rebuffed request for meeting with the Russians during the campaign. But then that would not fit the media narrative and their discredited collusion meme.

NY Times:Bannon in Limbo as Trump Faces Growing Calls for the Strategist’s Ouster
The president’s delay in denouncing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville has put new pressure on Stephen K. Bannon, who ran the Breitbart website.
If Bannon were back at Breitbart he could probably be more outspoken in fighting the evils of liberalism. Other than liberal hatred for all who disagree with them, it is hard to see what the gripe is about Bannon's conduct in the White House. If he were outside the White House he would be unleashed and able to expose liberal hate groups and those who fund them.

Norman Rogers:
...
Utility scale solar in the sunniest climates can generate electricity for about 7 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh). Outside of the sunny south the cost is about 9 cents per KWh. Most of the cost is capital cost, amortized over the life of the plant. Government subsides often cut the price in half for users of solar electricity.

Residential rooftop solar, under the best conditions, may generate electricity for about 15 cents per KWh. Usually the cost will be considerably higher. Not everyone’s roof faces south and not everyone lives in a sunny climate.

A fundamental error is to suppose that if solar could generate electricity at a cost equal to conventional generators it would be competitive. The leading type of conventional generator is combined cycle natural gas. These plants can generate electricity at a cost approaching 3.6 cents per KWh, or 2 to 3 times cheaper than solar. In order to be competitive, solar has to generate power not just cheaper than the alternative…

Washington Examiner:
While many Republicans and Democrats alike think President Trump's Monday rebuke of the racists who rallied in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend was too little, too late, he and some of his most loyal followers have learned a different lesson from the episode: Trump critics can never be appeased.

The president himself tweeted that he "made additional remarks on Charlottesville" only to be reminded that the "fake" news media "will never be satisfied." "Truly bad people!" Trump concluded.

Trump later retweeted a prominent alt-right Twitter user asking why the media was not more interested in the shootings that took place in Chicago over the weekend.

Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest child, arrived at a similar conclusion. "Unfortunately, it will never be enough," Trump Jr. tweeted in response to the criticism of his father's second, fuller set of remarks condemning white supremacists Monday. &…

BBC:The violence and murder of a protester in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend has been attributed to far-right elements that descended on the city to demonstrate against the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate war hero Robert E Lee.

President Donald Trump drew widespread criticism on Saturday when he said that there was violence on "many sides" in Charlottesville and initially neglected to explicitly censure the white supremacists who organised the rally.

On Monday, he bowed to pressure to castigate the KKK, white supremacists and neo-nazis.

But many conservatives say blame should be shared by Antifa, a loosely affiliated group of far-left protesters.

Critics argue the media tends to excuse violence by Antifa militants just because they are fighting white supremacists and their odious ideology.

The social causes of Antifa (short for anti-fascist or Anti-Fascist action) are easily identifiable as left-leaning.

Kim Jong Un warns he could change his mind if the U.S. persists in ‘extremely dangerous reckless actions’
I suspect they have not terminated their long term plan to go nuclear, but they are not ready to take on the US military at this point.

Washington Times:
The Hillary Clinton email fiasco isn’t ending anytime soon, with State Department officials saying they have no idea when they will finish sorting though and releasing the previously hidden messages.

More classified documents that the former secretary of state improperly handled keep coming to light.

The Trump administration doesn’t even know if it has hunted down every trace of the emails that Mrs. Clinton — a former first lady, U.S. senator, top diplomat and Democratic presidential nominee — sent from a secret email server stashed in her home.

“At this time, we do not have an estimate for completion of processing all of these documents,” a State Department official told The Washington Times.

In February 2016, the State Department completed a review of the roughly 30,000 emails that Mrs. Clinton turned over in December 2014, nearly two years after she left office.

The FBI last summer gave the State Department tens of thousands of additional emails from its investigation,…

PJ Media:'Anti-Fascists' Applaud Speech Made Completely of Hitler Quotes
This report is from a month ago, but it is an important reminder of who these people are and it seems clear that the mainstream media is not likely to expose these fascists who greatly outnumber the neo-Nazis they have been on a tear about. The real neo-Nazis also have a home on the left and they call themselves Antifa or Resistance.

Gen. Joseph Dunford applied additional pressure on Pyongyang during an Asia tour to calm fears of nuclear conflict.
This suggests that the US will not just try to shoot down are attack missile launches. Instead, North Korea will suffer coordinated attacks from several sources. Given the threat posed by North Korea, this makes the most sense and makes it more difficult for North Korea to leaks some missiles toward targets in teh US or at allies.

...
But what exactly is this so-called “alt-right” the Stupid Media keeps talking about? Best I can gather, it’s racists who are not totally racist. Or not as racist as “white nationalists.” Or, maybe, it’s racists who like black people. Or maybe it is just people who voted for Donald Trump. Who knew Mr. Obama’s “postracial” America would be so damned confusing?
...
While Hurt focusing on an awkward interview with the driver of a Charger accused of a killing, I have come to see the media's coverage of this event as a serial hate filled rant against the President rather than the white nationalists and the liberal fascist who were engaged in a confrontation.

NY Times:North Korea’s Missile Success Is Said to Be Linked to Ukraine
Investigators are focusing on a Ukrainian factory as a black-market source for North Korea, a new report and classified intelligence assessments say.
If this is proved to be true, it could lead to sanctions against an already fragile regime.

According to Patricia Mazzei of the Miami Herald, Diosdado Cabello Rondon, a drug lord and an influential figure within Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuelan government, may have placed a hit order on Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).
...
It looks like Trump's warning was an attempt to quash the effort to murder a US senator. It is a further indication of how the socialist have turned Venezuela into a narco state. It has been mainly a transit hub for Colombian cartels in recent years.

Event organizer Preston Wiginton confirmed Spencer's attendance Sunday, the day after 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed by a man who drove a car into a crowd of people protesting a "Unite The Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va.

"The event will be to protest the liberal anti-white agenda which includes white guilt which leads to white genocide," Wiginton told The Battalion, Texas A&M's student newspaper. "And the other purpose of the event will be to sponsor white identity and white pride in which white lives do matter. This is not an anti-brown event or anti-black event, this is an anti-liberal event."

Amy Smith, Texas A&M's executive vice president for marketing and communications, said Wiginton's ideas were the antithesis of those held by the school, which previously hosted …

Washington Examiner:
The untapped market for U.S. crude oil and natural gas isn't across the sea in Asia or Europe, but just across the border in Mexico.

More than 50 percent of Mexico's energy imports now comes from the U.S. as Mexico's national oil and gas company, Pemex, struggles to reinvest in its own production, according to a new report due out this week from S&P Global Platts that underscores the large stake Mexico has in buying fossil fuels from the United States.

The country also has to move forward with a plan that began two years ago to restructure its energy markets and make them more competitive by attracting more participants from the U.S. and other countries.

President Trump often touts America's rapid growth as an oil and gas producer and exporter. The White House last week issued a statement touting new Energy Department data that showed the U.S. is on target to become a net natural gas exporter this year, meaning it will ship more of the fuel abr…

The Atlantic:
Since 1907, portland, oregon, has hosted an annual Rose Festival. Since 2007, the festival had included a parade down 82nd Avenue. Since 2013, the Republican Party of Multnomah County, which includes Portland, had taken part. This April, all of that changed.

In the days leading up to the planned parade, a group called the Direct Action Alliance declared, “Fascists plan to march through the streets,” and warned, “Nazis will not march through Portland unopposed.” The alliance said it didn’t object to the Multnomah GOP itself, but to “fascists” who planned to infiltrate its ranks. Yet it also denounced marchers with “Trump flags” and “red maga hats” who could “normalize support for an orange man who bragged about sexually harassing women and who is waging a war of hate, racism and prejudice.” A second group, Oregon Students Empowered, created a Facebook page called “Shut down fascism! No nazis in Portland!”

Daily Caller:
Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the Trump dossier, turned over thousands of pages of documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee late Wednesday, The Daily Caller is told.

But the documents do not appear to be what the committee was hoping that Fusion GPS and its founder, Glenn Simpson, would provide.

“The committee is reviewing the production received late this afternoon from Mr. Simpson, but virtually all of the documents appear to be merely news clippings rather than records of Fusion’s substantive communications,” George Hartmann, a spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee, told TheDC.

The paltry document production escalates the standoff between Fusion GPS and the Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.
...
In its request to Fusion, the Judiciary Committee asked for contracts that the firm signed for its work on the dossier.
...
The committee also asked Fusion to produce contracts and communications regarding its work ag…

NY Times:Pruitt Is Carrying Out E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say
The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has made it clear that he intends to dismantle the E.P.A.’s environmental mission. His critics say he is deploying extraordinary secrecy as he does so.
In recent years the EPA has acted like a rogue agency ignoring Congress and its initial role as an agency to pursue a radical environmental agenda. What in the world do mud puddles and ditches have to do with even global warming? Pruit is right to rein in the rogues and get control of the agenda at the agency.

When I mention the white nationalists, I should note that they are not some spontaneous outpouring of local sentiment. Someone on the Left posted photos of the neo-Nazis on Twitter and asked if people could identify them, speculating that they might be members of University of Virginia College Republicans. (This person has apparently never met a college Republican. In my experience, they are paragons of bland respectability.)

When he actually got his answers, it turns out that the people in the photos were all known, active white supremacists—the usual suspects—and they came from all across the country: Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Texas, Massachusetts, California. Everywhere but Charlottesville. I’m not saying that It Can’t Happen Here, but Spencer and his brownshirt wannabes are a very, very small fraction of the population. They have to draw from across the country to get enough people all in one place to be noticeable.

... They have been attempting to portray Trump as a Nazi, which is so deranged that anyone making the comparison is clearly a nut. Nazis do not marry off their favorite daughter to an orthodox Jew, watch her convert, and produce Jewish grandchildren.

The media campaign to require Trump to blame one side more than the other is an attempt to enforce two pillars of the orthodoxy of American victimology:

In any conflict, the position taken by any African-American group or “leader” (even Black Lives Matter – “pigs in a blanket – fry ‘em like bacon” -- whose banners were visible yesterday in Charlottesville) is by definition morally superior to their critics.Words that any member of a victim class object to are sufficient provocation to violence, because words are themselves violence.
...
There is more.

I think the critics are being unfair. Trump was critical of the violence. BTW, where is t…

Guardian:Why Socialists in America Are Experiencing a Boom
It takes ignorance on a grand scale to favor socialism. How anyone could support it after looking at its most recent example of failure in Venezuela is beyond comprehension. Proponents keep saying no one has done it right, but they never consider the fact that it is impossible to do right.

It takes a megalomaniacal idiot to think he can decide every aspect of commerce for everyone in a country. That is one of the reasons that one of the first signs of failure is people standing in line to buy basic commodities from bread to toilet paper.

NY Times:Threats Are a Wild Card in Showdown With North Korea
Many in Washington and capitals across the Pacific are wondering whether Mr. Trump’s fusillade of apocalyptic threats was more method or madness.
Trump's responses to threats from North Korea have been rather mild in comparison to those issued by the Norks. What they demonstrate is that the Nork threats are not going to deter the US from pursuing its interests and protecting its people.

Liberals who are criticizing Trump should give some thought to exactly who North Korea is threatening. Every one of the cities the North Koreans have targeted are dominated by liberals including Austin, Texas. That Trump is staking his presidency and the country's future on protecting these liberal bastions should at least be appreciated and not criticized.

Meteorologist Joe Bastardi explains: “Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on warnings of future events — the same future events that have not happened. The fact is that global temperatures from 2006-2007 while Gore was basking in the glory of his apocalypse-driven fame were warmer than they are now, and we are still falling off the Super El Niño peak. Additionally, much of the time in-between was lower than what it was in the run-up to ‘An Inconvenient Truth.'” Bastardi added: “Fact: Without monkeying around and ‘finding’ warming, temps have changed very little during 20 year AGW hysteria period.”
...
There is more including charts at the link above. There are some so wedded to the warming agenda that they monkey with the data but it is getting harder to hide their cooking the books to make things look warmer.

Washington Examiner:
President Trump signed into law a bill providing over $2 billion to open new Veterans Affairs department medical facilities and fund care for veterans seeking medical care outside the government system on Saturday.

"This bill will ensure that veterans continue to have the ability to see the doctor of their choice," Trump said during a press conference at the bill's signing. "You're going to have immediate medical care for our veterans."

The legislation, which passed the House unanimously, provides funding for veterans who seek treatment from a private doctor in certain cases. It also allows the Veterans Affairs department to lease 28 new facilities around the country, in an attempt to expand access to government-provided care. That makes it a compromise in the larger debate between conservative and liberal proponents of VA reform.
...
This appears to be a fulfillment of a campaign promise which may account for the lack of coverage in th…